Doing Time

• Name — Doing Time • Ja Kanji — 刑務所の中 • Genre — Essay manga

• Type — manga • Author — Kazuichi Hanawa • Magazine — AX • First — 1998 • Last — 2000 • Volumes — 1 Doing Time is a Japanese manga written and illustrated by Kazuichi Hanawa. It was serialised in AX from 1998 until 2000, and was translated into English and published as a single book by Fanfare/Ponent Mon in 2004. In 2002, the manga was adapted into a film of the same name, directed by Yoichi Sai.

Hanawa, a manga writer and illustrator, was sentenced to three years in prison in December 1994 for possessing replica firearms and antique weapons, despite a national letter-writing campaign supporting leniency in his sentencing. While in custody, as a way to "keep his sanity", he meticulously recorded the rules and regulations that governed life in prison. After his release, he sent a postcard to Noriko Tetsuka, who had just founded AX, lamenting the financial difficulties which he had heard that the magazine was facing. Tetsuka responded, offering him the opportunity to create something for AX, to which he agreed immediately. Hanawa said that all he could think about was his time in prison, and began serialising prison stories based on true events for the magazine. AX was in a perilous financial position when the serial for Doing Time was finished, but Tetsuka credits the success of the book version of the manga with saving the magazine. Hanawa drew his illustrations for the book entirely from memory, as he was not permitted to draw in custody.

Hanawa is in jail waiting to be transferred to a larger prison, wondering how his cell accumulates so much dust, and imagining himself turning into a pig in prison with nothing to do but eat. After he transfers to a larger prison, he shares a cell with four other people, and works in the prison's factory carving wooden tissue boxes. "Recreated with a meticulousness rarely found in" comics, the manga includes floor plans, clothing options, the prison's daily schedules and a heavy and detailed focus on the food served in prison.